Acerca dos monopólios informais (II)

Parte I.

"How does a little monopolist grow its monopoly from a tiny one to a big enough one to be economically survivable, then attractive, then a money machine? It is by delighting its customers. And it isn’t altruistic. It needs more customers to get the economic model to work. And each customer benefits from the attempt to get the next one in order to make the economics work. It is a win-win!

But then the monopolist gets to the point of making the economics work, and beyond there, the monopoly becomes a magnificent profit machine. At that point, another customer would be perfectly nice, but who really cares? The monopolist is rich beyond its wildest dreams.

At that point, unless the monopolist remembers Rule #2, customers go to the back of the line. They just cease to matter. In fact, they become an irritation that gets in the way of self-actualization, which is the thing that really matters to the monopolist. And then the monopolist comes up with clever ways to make more money by abusing them. Sell their data to nasty people. Force them to sign restrictive contracts. Bias search results that they used to count on for their objectivity. It goes on and on. (The analog for businesses with only a small core of monopoly customers is to take those customers completely for granted while making luxurious offers to attract new customers.)

And then the monopolist starts the slow downward spiral. It is a very slow death. Again, the future is already here; it is just not evenly distributed. Customers will appeal to the government for help (ask AT&T, IBM and Microsoft). Or they will use a different device because it doesn’t use the monopoly operating system. Or they will abandon the monopolist’s service just to prove a point. In due course, the economics crater."

Trechos retirados de "The Two Rules that Monopolists Ignore at their Peril"